They are excited about their introduction to the hobby.
How do you recruit them to a greater depth of exposure and appreciation?
New players generally try to fit in. So if all you ever talk about is D&D, they probably won't care much about other games. Likewise, if you and your buddies only talk about 5E, a new player probably won't care as much about BECMI.
Having a working knowledge of the history of RPGs yourself helps. I advise "Playing at the world" and "Designers & Dragons".
Quote from: Razor 007;1079455They are excited about their introduction to the hobby.
Good, get them to play RPGs as much as possible, ideally as many different RPGs as possible.
Quote from: Razor 007;1079455How do you recruit them to a greater depth of exposure and appreciation?
Why bother? What has gone before is history.
If they are interested in that kind of thing, then they'll find out for themselves. If you force it down their throats, it might turn them off RPGs entirely.
What you could do is to give them some links to various History of RPGing pages on the web, so that they can look at them if they want.
A run a bunch of low-to-mid crunch campaigns for them. If they have really good experiences in different systems, then they will care about the larger hobby.
I would say the best way is to show instead of telling them. You only know what you know. If you know D&D 5e, that's what you know. You might assume that older editions are worse instead of different. Frankly, most of the players I've gamed with in my life would have had a lot more fun with something like Swords & Wizardry Continual Light or even Swords & Wizardry Light! Instead, we tried to play much more complicated systems and usually our groups only played a few games before the books went into a closet. The interest in the hobby died out among everybody I knew over the years. The last thing most people want to do these days is do homework and that's what a lot of editions feel like. I love reading systems. I don't know many people offline that do. I feel like I missed out on a lot of fun over the years. This hobby has always been bittersweet for me. The most fun I've had in years was when I stumbled the Labyrinth paper and pencil game on Wikipedia and actually played it. It's the lightest version of a dungeon crawl you can possibly run. The prep took three minutes. The play took thirty minutes. It's like running the mapping part of old school D&D without anything else.
You dont. Most young people could care less about history.
I started my 5 year old son off on Mentzer BECMI, so when he (now 11) plays 5e D&D, he can scoff at the kids today with their easy-peasy kinder, gentler gaming, just like a real Grognard.
Quote from: Razor 007;1079455How do you recruit them to a greater depth of exposure and appreciation?
Introduce them to different games you enjoy.
RPGing is leisure time, not lecture time. People new to gaming may have only experienced the 5e craptacular so its possible they will be really excited when they try out different games they never heard of.
Of course, ask their interests. If they are a huge sci fi fan, superhero fan or horror fan, then point them toward those games.
Some people have a weird need to only play games currently in print (I see this in the boardgame world too oddly enough), so if the player has a bias against "old stuff", then tailor your recommendations accordingly...or not.
As for the history lesson aspect, some people are interested in the history of their hobby, but they are oddballs. It's like sports fans. Most don't know the history of their favorite teams, let alone the history of rival teams, but then there's the dudes who know every team that played in every Superbowl and will argue the style of quarterbacks over each decade.
That's cool for those sports history buffs, but not necessary for new sports fans to enjoy tonight's game.